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One year since the launch of ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), we catch up with core team members Claire Vallat, Giuseppe Sarri, Olivier Witasse and Ignacio Tanco.

From memories of launch day to hopes for the future, they talk honestly about the ups and downs of flying a space mission, and reveal how they’re ensuring that Juice will be a huge success.

Three years ago astronauts threw out the largest piece of trash ever tossed from the International Space Station. Now some of it has punched a hole through a house in Naples, Fla.

Insertion of genetic material from a virus into the genome of a vertebrate ancestor enabled the lightning-quick electrical impulses that give animals with backbones their smarts

2 min read

Hubble Spots a Galaxy Hidden in a Dark Cloud This Hubble image features the spiral galaxy IC 4633. ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Acknowledgement: L. Shatz

The subject of this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the spiral galaxy IC 4633, located 100 million light-years away from us in the constellation Apus. IC 4633 is a galaxy rich in star-forming activity and also hosts an active galactic nucleus at its core. From our point of view, the galaxy is tilted mostly towards us, giving astronomers a fairly good view of its billions of stars.

However, we can’t fully appreciate the features of this galaxy — at least in visible light — because it’s partially concealed by a stretch of dark dust (lower-right third of the image). This dark nebula is part of the Chamaeleon star-forming region, itself located only around 500 light-years from us, in a nearby part of our Milky Way galaxy. The dark clouds in the Chamaeleon region occupy a large area of the southern sky, covering their namesake constellation but also encroaching on nearby constellations, like Apus. The cloud is well-studied for its treasury of young stars, particularly the cloud Cha I, which both Hubble and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have imaged.

The cloud overlapping IC 4633 lies east of the well-known Cha I, II, and III, and is also known as MW9 and the South Celestial Serpent. Classified as an integrated flux nebula (IFN) — a cloud of gas and dust in the Milky Way galaxy that’s not near to any single star and is only faintly lit by the total light of all the galaxy’s stars — this vast, narrow trail of faint gas that snakes over the southern celestial pole is much more subdued looking than its neighbors. Hubble has no problem making out the South Celestial Serpent, though this image captures only a tiny part of it.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

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Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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Last Updated

Apr 12, 2024

Editor Andrea Gianopoulos

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• Astrophysics
• Astrophysics Division
• Galaxies
• Goddard Space Flight Center
• Hubble Space Telescope
• Missions
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After a short conversation with an artificial intelligence, people’s belief in a conspiracy theory dropped by about 20 per cent

Five years ago, a fossil found in the Philippines was determined to be from a new species of hominin called Homo luzonensis. Since then, we’ve learned a bit more about the newest member of the human family

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The ocean’s twice-daily rise and fall is only the most obvious effect of tides—they slow Earth’s spin and shape stars and galaxies, too

Exploration of the Moon or other dusty environments comes with challenges. The lunar surface is covered in material known as regolith and its a jaggy, glassy material. It can cause wear and tear on equipment and can pose a health risk to astronauts too. Astronauts travelling to Mars would experience dust saucing to everything, including solar panels leading to decrease in power. To combat the problems created by dust, NASA is working on an innovative electrodynamic dust shield to remove dust and protect surfaces from solar panels to space suits. 

Dust is common on Earth as much as it is on other worlds although of course the source can be very different. It plagues are homes and leads to the constant battle to remove it from our homes in the almost ritualistic activity of dusting. Even here there are a multitude of sprays, brushes and rags that claim to help. Some even employ the electrostatic force to help repel dust from surfaces. It is a mere annoyance to us, perhaps causing the odd electrical device to over heat but largely its a small part of our lives. On alien worlds, it can lead to serious equipment malfunction and serious health hazards. 

Researchers at NASAs Kennedy Space Centre in Florida are now turning to electrostatic forces for help to keep astronauts and equipment dust free. Technology is being developed that has been called the Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) –  I rather wish they dropped the word dust from the title to make it sound a little more StarTrek! The shield uses transparent electrodes and electric fields to electrically remove dust from surfaces.The idea was inspired by the electric curtain concept that was developed by NASA in 1967 but this new EDS has been in development since 2004. 

A close-up view of astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s bootprint in the lunar soil, photographed with the 70mm lunar surface camera during Apollo 11’s sojourn on the moon. Image by NASA

Dust exposure is a real concern for Commercial Lunar Payload Services and Artemis missions as the material can get into gaskets and seals, hatches and even potentially lunar habitats compromising their integrity. Dr Charles Buhler, lead scientist said “For these CPLS and Artemis missions, dust exposure is a concern because the lunar surface is far different than what we’re used to here.”

It’s the nature of the stuff to, not just that it gets everywhere like sand after a day at the beach. It is really abrasive like tiny pieces of glass because, unlike Earth where weathering tends to dull sharp edges, no such process occurs on the Moon. Even brushing the stuff off surfaces can lead to problems. 

The technology has been tested in vacuum chambers to simulate the space environment and results looked very promising. The Apollo missions collected samples of lunar regolith and some of this was used in the testing. The material was ejected from the surface within seconds. Following the successful tests, EDS materials were embedded on glass panels and test spacesuit fabrics on board the International Space Station and more recently Intuitive Machines first lunar lander too. EDS technology was used in lenses in the EagleCam CubeSat camera. Data is now being collected and future missions will carry the EDS concept to further test its capability to keep machines and humans safe on dusty worlds. 

Source : NASA Technology Helps Guard Against Lunar Dust

The post NASA is Building an Electrodynamic Shield to Deal with all that Dust on the Moon and Mars appeared first on Universe Today.

A 10-minute walk can build up enough static electricity to power a battery-free water purifier, which could be especially helpful during disasters or in regions that lack access to clean water and stable power supplies

Video: 00:07:30

On the last day of his Huginn mission, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen takes us on a tour of the place he called home for 6 months: the International Space Station. From the beautiful views of Cupola to the kitchen in Node 1 filled with food and friends and all the way to the science of Columbus, the Space Station is the work and living place for astronauts as they help push science forward. 

The deadly virus was practically eliminated in the U.S., but now it’s infecting more people.

Not long after the last world war, the historian William L. Shirer had this to say about the next world war. It “will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquers and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited planet.” As an investigative journalist, I write about war, weapons, national security and government secrets. I’ve previously written six books about US military and intelligence programmes – at the CIA, The Pentagon, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency– all designed to prevent, or deter, nuclear world war III. In the course of my work, countless people in the upper echelons of US government have told me, proudly, that they’ve dedicated their lives to making sure the US never has a nuclear war. But what if it did? “Every capability in the [Department of Defense] is underpinned by the fact that strategic deterrence will hold,” US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which is responsible for nuclear deterrence, insists publicly. Until the autumn of 2022, this promise was pinned on STRATCOM’s public Twitter feed. But to a private audience at Sandia National Laboratories later that same year, STRATCOM’s Thomas Bussiere, admitted the existential danger inherent to deterrence. “Everything unravels itself if those things are not true.” If deterrence fails – what exactly would that unravelling look like? To write Nuclear War: A scenario, I put this question to scores of former nuclear command and control authorities. To the military and civilian experts who’ve built the weapon systems, been privy to the response plans and been responsible for advising the US president on nuclear counterstrike decisions should they have to be made. What I learned terrified me. Here are just a few of the shocking truths about nuclear war. The US maintains a nuclear launch policy called Launch on Warning. This means that if a military satellite indicates the nation is under nuclear attack and a second early-warning radar confirms that information, the president launches nuclear missiles in response. Former secretary of defense William Perry told me: “Once we are warned of a nuclear attack, we prepare to launch. This is policy. We do not wait.” The US president has sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. He asks permission of no one. Not the secretary of defense, not the chairman of the joint chief of staff, not the US Congress. “The authority is inherent in his role as commander in chief,” the Congressional Research Service confirms. The president “does not need the concurrence of either his [or her] military advisors or the US Congress to order the launch of nuclear weapons”. When the president learns he must respond to a nuclear attack, he has just 6 minutes to do so. Six minutes is an irrational amount of time to “decide whether to release Armageddon”, President Ronald Reagan lamented in his memoirs. “Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radar scope… How could anyone apply reason at a time like that?” And yet, the president must respond. This is because it takes roughly just 30 minutes for an intercontinental ballistic missile to get from a launch pad in Russia, North Korea or China to any city in the US, and vice versa. Nuclear-armed submarines can cut that launch-to-target time to 10 minutes, or less. Today, there are nine nuclear- powers, with a combined total of more than 12,500 nuclear weapons ready to be used. The US and Russia each have some 1700 nuclear weapons deployed – weapons that can be launched in seconds or minutes after their respective president gives the command. This is what Shirer meant when he said: “Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it.” Nuclear war is the only scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end civilisation in a matter of hours. The soot from burning cities and forests will blot out the sun and cause nuclear winter. Agriculture will fail. Some 5 billion people will die. In the words of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, “the survivors will envy the dead”. I wrote Nuclear War: A scenario to demonstrate – in appalling, minute-by-minute detail – just how horrifying a nuclear war would be. “Humanity is one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” UN secretary-general António Guterres warned the world in 2022. “This is madness. We must reverse course.” How true. Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, published by Torva (£20.00), is available now. It is the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club: sign up here to read along with our members

In this terrifying extract from Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario, the author lays out what would happen in the first seconds after a nuclear missile hits the Pentagon

Jupiter is easy to spot, shining low in the west at nightfall. Near it are Uranus and Comet Pons-Brooks, tougher catches that require binoculars or a wide-field telescope — and some finding skills.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, April 12 – 21 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Suit up and get ready to launch on your own amazingly realistic Moon mission! Available now in Fortnite, Lunar Horizons is a vividly immersive experience set on the Moon during a future international mission. Released on 11 April 2024, the game was created by Epic Games, ESA and Hassell, in collaboration with Buendea and Team PWR.

Image: This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image shows the delta of the Ebro River on the northeast coast of Spain.

Before the Orion spacecraft is stacked atop NASA’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) rocket ahead of the Artemis II mission, engineers will put it through a series of rigorous tests to ensure it is ready for lunar flight. In preparation for testing, teams at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida have made significant upgrades to the altitude chamber where testing will occur.  

Several of the tests take place inside one of two altitude chambers in the high bay of the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building at Kennedy. These tests, which began on April 10, include checking out electromagnetic interference and electromagnetic compatibility, which demonstrate the capability of the spacecraft when subjected to internally and externally generated electromagnetic energy and verify that all systems perform as they would during the mission.  

To prepare for the tests, the west altitude chamber was upgraded to test the spacecraft in a vacuum environment that simulates an altitude of up to 250,000 feet. These upgrades re-activated altitude chamber testing capabilities for the Orion spacecraft at Kennedy. Previous vacuum testing on the Orion spacecraft for Artemis I took place at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio. Teams also installed a 30-ton crane in the O&C to lift and lower the Orion crew and service module stack into the chamber, lift and lower the chamber’s lid, and move the spacecraft across the high bay.  

On April 4, 2024, a team lifts the Artemis II Orion spacecraft into a vacuum chamber inside the Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will undergo electromagnetic compatibility and interference testing.Photo credit: NASA/Amanda Stevenson

On Thursday, April 4, teams loaded the Artemis II spacecraft into the altitude chamber. This event marks the first time, since the Apollo testing, that a spacecraft designed for human exploration of space has entered the chamber for testing. After testing is complete, the spacecraft will return to the Final Assembly and Systems Testing, or FAST, cell in the O&C for further work. Later this summer, teams will lift Orion back into the altitude chamber to conduct a test that simulates as close as possible the conditions in the vacuum of deep space. 

Originally used to test environmental and life support systems on the lunar and command modules during the Apollo Program, the interior of each altitude chamber measures 33 feet in diameter and 44 feet high and was designed to simulate the vacuum equivalent of up to 200,000 feet in a deep space environment. Both chambers were rated for astronaut crews to operate flight systems during tests. 

View of the Altitude Chambers inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo Credit: ACI/Penny Rogo Bailes

After Apollo, the chambers were used for leak tests on pressurized modules delivered by the Shuttle program for the International Space Station. 

View of the Altitude Chambers inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo Credit: ACI/Penny Rogo Bailes

Additional upgrades to the west chamber include a new oxygen deficiency monitoring system that provides real-time monitoring of the oxygen levels and a new airflow system. New LED lights replaced the previous lighting system, and equipment from the Apollo days was removed. A pressure control system was added to the chamber that provides precise control of pressure levels. Two new pumps remove the air from the chamber to create a vacuum. New guardrails and service platforms replaced the older platforms inside the chamber. 

A new control room overlooks the upgraded chamber. It contains several workstations and communication equipment. The chamber control and monitoring system was upgraded to handle operation of all the remotely controlled hardware and subsystems that make up the vacuum testing capability. 

“It was an amazing opportunity to lead a diverse and exceptional team to re-activate a capability for testing the NASA’s next generation spacecraft that will carry humans back to the Moon,” said Marie Reed, West Altitude Chamber Reactivation Project Manager. “The team of more than 70 aerospace professionals, included individuals from NASA, Lockheed Martin, Artic Slope Research Corps, Jacobs Engineering, and every discipline area imaginable. This project required long hours of dedication and exceptional coordination to enable the successful turn-around and activation in time for this Artemis II spacecraft testing.” 

Team leads from the west altitude chamber reactivation project are pictured in Artemis gear standing in front of the upgraded vacuum chamber inside the Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The team for this project included more than 70 aerospace professionals who received a NASA Silver Group Achievement Award for their efforts. Pictured from left to right: Victor Allpiste (Power & Lighting Systems Electrical Lead) Raymond T. Francois (TQCM System Lead / Mechanical Engineer) Marie Reed (Project Manager), Alfredo Urbina (Controls / Electrical Systems Lead), and Tim Saunders (Mechanical Systems Lead)Photo credit: NASA

NASA’s Artemis II mission will carry four astronauts aboard the agency’s Orion spacecraft on an approximately 10-day test flight around the Moon and back to Earth, the first crewed flight under Artemis that will test Orion’s life support systems ahead of future missions. Under the Artemis campaign, NASA will return humanity to the lunar surface, this time sending humans to explore the lunar South Pole region.  

For time lapse footage of the Artemis II lift into the vacuum chamber visit: Artemis II Orion Vac Chamber Lift and Load Operations 

4 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Members of the media visited a clean room at JPL April 11 to get a close-up look at NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft and interview members of the mission team. The spacecraft is expected to launch in October 2024 on a six-year journey to the Jupiter system, where it will study the ice-encased moon Europa.NASA/JPL-Caltech

Excitement is mounting as the largest spacecraft NASA has ever built for a planetary mission gets readied for an October launch.

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California are running final tests and preparing the agency’s Europa Clipper spacecraft for the next leg of its journey: launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Europa Clipper, which will orbit Jupiter and focus on the planet’s ice-encased moon Europa, is expected to leave JPL later this spring. Its launch period opens on Oct. 10.

Members of the media put on “bunny suits” — outfits to protect the massive spacecraft from contamination — to see Europa Clipper up close in JPL’s historic Spacecraft Assembly Facility on Thursday, April 11. Project Manager Jordan Evans, Launch-to-Mars Mission Manager Tracy Drain, Project Staff Scientist Samuel Howell, and Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations Cable Harness Engineer Luis Aguila were on the clean room floor, while Deputy Project Manager Tim Larson, and Mission Designer Ricardo Restrepo were in the gallery above to explain the mission and its goals.

The viewing gallery above High Bay 1 in JPL’s historic Spacecraft Assembly Facility provided members of the media with a vantage point to observe the clean room where Europa Clipper was put together.NASA/JPL-Caltech Europa Clipper Science Communications Lead Cynthia Phillips explains the science of the mission to members of the media in von Kármán Auditorium at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on April 11. A cutaway model showing the moon’s layers can be seen behind Phillips.NASA/JPL-Caltech

Planning of the mission began in 2013, and Europa Clipper was officially confirmed by NASA as a mission in 2019. The trip to Jupiter is expected to take about six years, with flybys of Mars and Earth. Reaching the gas giant in 2030, the spacecraft will orbit Jupiter while flying by Europa dozens of times, dipping as close as 16 miles (25 kilometers) from the moon’s surface to gather data with its powerful suite of science instruments. The information will help scientists learn about the ocean beneath the moon’s icy shell, map Europa’s surface composition and geology, and hunt for any potential plumes of water vapor that may be venting from the crust.

“After over a decade of hard work and problem-solving, we’re so proud to show the nearly complete Europa Clipper spacecraft to the world,” said Evans. “As critical components came in from institutions across the globe, it’s been exciting to see parts become a greater whole. We can’t wait to get this spacecraft to the Jupiter system.”

At the event, a cutaway model showing the moon’s layers and a globe of the moon helped journalists learn why Europa is such an interesting object of study. On hand with the details were Project Staff Scientist and Assistant Science Systems Engineer Kate Craft from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and, from JPL, Project Scientist Robert Pappalardo, Deputy Project Scientist Bonnie Buratti, and Science Communications Lead Cynthia Phillips.

Beyond Earth, Europa is considered one of the most promising potentially habitable environments in our solar system. While Europa Clipper is not a life-detection mission, its primary science goal is to determine whether there are places below the moon’s icy surface that could support life.

When the main part of the spacecraft arrives at Kennedy Space Center in a few months, engineers will finish preparing Europa Clipper for launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, attaching its giant solar arrays and carefully tucking the spacecraft inside the capsule that rides on top of the rocket. Then Europa Clipper will be ready to begin its space odyssey.

More About the Mission

Europa Clipper’s three main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its surface interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterize its geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.

Find more information about Europa here:

europa.nasa.gov

Europa Clipper Media Reel News Media Contacts

Jia-Rui Cook / Gretchen McCartney / Val Gratias
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0724 / 818-393-6215 / 626-318-2141
jia-rui.c.cook@jpl.nasa.gov / gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov / valerie.m.gratias@jpl.nasa.gov

Karen Fox / Charles Blue
NASA Headquarters
301-286-6284 / 202-802-5345
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / charles.e.blue@nasa.gov

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Details Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 Related Terms

• Europa Clipper
• Europa
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• The Solar System

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